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Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill [HL]

My Lords, I begin with the very clear statement that the Government fully recognise the importance of donor-conceived children being told about their origins. In the past there was a great deal of secrecy in this area and society generally accepted this culture, as the noble Earl rightly said. Although the same culture of secrecy is no longer the case, this is a sensitive area that involves delving into intimate family relationships. The noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, eloquently told us of the conflicting views on this issue and the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, expanded further on those differences. I believe that we all agree on the value of donor-conceived children knowing about their origins, but we must weigh this against inappropriate interference from the state and work out the best method for achieving openness. The approach of the Donor Conception Network—an organisation of families of donor-conceived children and donor-conceived adults—is to encourage parents of donor-conceived children to tell them from a young age about their background. The Government recognise the merit in this approach and we are committed to encouraging openness by way of education rather than enforcement. We are funding the Donor Conception Network to produce materials on how to tell, and to run workshops on telling. The Government have proposed to strengthen the provisions in the Bill with respect to counselling and information provision. In addition to requiring that all patients be given the offer of counselling and provided with relevant information, it also places a requirement on the HFEA to produce guidance on doing so to clinics. I recognise that there is some feeling that indicating in some way on birth certificates that children are donor-conceived will ensure they are better placed to find out about their genetic background. I believe that there would be very serious drawbacks to that approach. First, it is surely better for a person to find out that they are donor conceived in the course of a discussion with his or her family rather than through a birth certificate. Secondly, birth certificates are discoverable documents for anyone, so this information would not be kept private. The point raised by the noble Baroness about identity cards is an interesting one on which to reflect. There are further practical problems such as how, when registering a birth, a registrar could be expected to ask every person for information about the child’s conception without causing distress or offence. There is a further possibility that some parents might want to hide this information and not be honest when registering the birth. There are also questions about whether the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, as proposed in the amendment, is best placed to carry out a review in this area. Changes to the birth registration laws would involve amending a number of different Acts and I do not believe that a review of the law in this area would be within the remit of the HFEA. It is also not clear that this provision is necessarily appropriate to be implemented by secondary legislation. Very important issues have been raised during this debate and I believe we are all committed to the same objective—to ensure that donor-conceived children are aware of their conception and origins. Since the Committee stage we have had many discussions to try to resolve this problem but, frankly, we have not done so yet. The noble Lord’s amendment is an interesting way forward but we do not believe that it is the right one at this time for the reasons that I have given. The Government keep matters concerning gamete and embryo donation under review. We reviewed the position on donors, leading to the removal of donor anonymity in 2005 and we have provisions in this Bill that allow for donor-conceived people, their siblings and their donors, to have access to information. As I mentioned earlier in withdrawing Amendment No. 128, we have accepted the spirit of Amendment No. 129, tabled by the noble Earl, Lord Howe, which would extend the HFEA's duty to give guidance about information provided by clinics to state that information provided by clinics should address the importance of disclosing to any child born from treatment services the circumstances of their conception. As I said, this is currently an intractable problem but I assure noble Lords that we will continue to keep under review options about informing donor-conceived people about their conception, including continuing dialogue with the Donor Conception Network about the impact of its work. We will gladly involve noble Lords with a specific interest in this in our future discussions. On that basis I hope that the noble Lord will feel able to withdraw the amendment.